


The Shirt

by Unovis



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-30
Updated: 2012-01-30
Packaged: 2017-11-19 21:19:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/577778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unovis/pseuds/Unovis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lestrade pulled his punches.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Shirt

***  
  
Gregory Lestrade, boy and man, was careful around people—bad people, good people, citizens, staff. He was careful not to push, to grab, to punch, to wrench. He’d had enough of that in his own life, from his gran, from his mother, from the men she let into their house. Strength held in check, anger reined. Soft, his wife used to call him. He thought she liked him soft, liked his measured treatment of her and her girls, right up to the end.  
  
The end, when they left, was sudden. Like a bone breaking. At work a detective, at home a fool. His family fell away, stole away, ran to the back of beyond; to New Zealand, to another man’s care. He was rich, the hard woolly bastard who replaced him. Lestrade hoped he died dick deep in a sheep.  
  
So the house was his alone, too large as it was. The job was his, the nights were his. He drank too much, that first year.  
  
That first year, that first time Sherlock Bloody Holmes pushed into his job, his night, his house, his head, he’d been drunk. Off duty and nearly off his face, recalled on a freak case. Holmes was on the scene, high as a kite, detained on suspicion—wrong, wrong, wrong, he’d railed, fools, he’d babbled, popping and fizzing and spinning around, throwing off impossible statements about the armless body found wedged in a fishmonger’s skip. In retrospect, not unusual. For Holmes. That part of it. The deducing, the bobbing and weaving, the grating, adolescent arrogance, the indecent glee.  
  
The sex, that was strange.  
  
Lestrade woke up on his couch, alone, trousers at his ankles, one shoe off; head banging like a drum, mouth dry, bits and places sore and sticky. Under the shower’s spray he found bruises on his hip and sides. Fingertips or knees—he recognized the patterns. Over coffee he tried carefully to reconstruct the crime, past the burning cotton in his head and the lump in his throat. Yes, he’d said yes. He wasn’t sure the Holmes, the fellow—this Sherlock, ridiculous name—had asked, but Greg knew he’d answered him yes, God, yes he wanted it. So, consenting adults, right, then, criminally careless but legal. A stupid, drunken fumble with a mad bastard, nothing nicked, and he’d never see him again. His hands wrapped around his coffee mug, his knuckles, showed no signs of impact with anything or anyone. Then he let himself remember dark curls around his fingers, wide, sweet lips, and gleaming eyes. Beautiful, right, and reaching for him. He hoped no one on the force had taken note. He hoped he’d never fall this far, this badly again.  
  
He’d felt more of a rutting fool if he’d known that morning this wasn’t a one-off, only a cracked window, a dented door. The genius prat returned; at the next odd crime scene, at the edge of his vision, then in his face. More crimes, more bodies, and cases solved. They snapped, they smoked, they sparked.  
  
The second year, the sex stopped being strange. That was the best he could say about it. It was still sudden and rough around the edges, right to the threshold of his tolerance. Breakfast not included. No affection there, but no more drugs or drunks, no more oblivion as excuse. He sharpened his game at the Met, keeping up. Sherlock got clean for reasons unexplained. He became a necessary evil on the job. An evil need, off it. An itch, an ache, a vice. Life, right?  
  
Clean, through sober eyes, Sherlock was a dandy, Sherlock was a tease. He had these suits, this scarf, these black calfskin gloves in wintertime; that Italian cashmere coat, when the weather was mild. Those shirts. Sherlock was the devil dressed in sin, when it pleased him.  
  
The third year he’d stay over for more than a shag and a shower. Not for long, not for much, at first. Tea and toast. A shave. A few neutral words and half a smile. But then came hot, sulfurous summer. Sherlock’s current digs were squalid and he despised the heat. Greg came home for a long weekend to find the pest, now the consulting detective pest, sprawled on his couch in front of the fan, wearing only a cotton kimono and Greg’s laptop. “You don’t mind, do you? My power’s off.” Sixteen amazing, terrifying days he stayed, before the weather broke and he was gone.  
  
Those were the days of naked shirt. The days when Sherlock found that wearing one of his slim-cut poplin shirts and nothing else would bring Greg to his knees, here in the vestibule, there in the garden, there, here, wherever Sherlock pleased. Opening all but the bottom button, letting the fan belly the cloth like a sail. Bending across Anna’s toy box, hands braced on the wall, calling strokes over his shoulder. Sitting bare-arsed on the kitchen table, dripping honey from a spoon--Greg, suited up for the office, undone, licking between his thighs. It was the summer they found uses for strong, silk ties. It was the summer Greg stopped wearing them.  
  
He came, he went, more often after that. It was their year of cautious abandon. There were kisses, passing sweet.  
  
The fourth year rolled in. There was less caution. There were new shirts, one in particular. There was an end.

Prune. Violet, Port, Aubergine. (It’s purple, said Sherlock.) Japanese maple, dried roses, burgundy. What Sherlock’s new shirt looked like was none of these.  
  
The end was at a crime scene. Lestrade was shaken. Sherlock was surprised. They ended and the world went on producing crimes and bodies and they went on working cases because they did it so well.  
  
It wasn’t an interesting crime. It wasn’t elegant (Sherlock’s word) or clever or difficult to solve. It was dirty and dull and cruel. Only… Greg’s head throbbed.  
  
A mother beat her son with a wooden chair. The neighbors heard it. Her lover shot her dead, then ran. The neighbors saw it. Only… Greg’s chest ached.  
  
Sherlock had tracked him to the scene, curious, then bored. “Glock 26; and see, here, and here, and there; he’s AFO. One of you,” said Sherlock, shrugging. “Only surprise is…”  
  
Greg didn’t track his movements. He had Sherlock bang against the wall, hands on his throat, knee between his thighs, belly against his front, between the sides of his open coat. Sherlock’s gloved hands failed to get between their bodies, to find purchase. Sherlock jabbed at his kidneys and Greg tightened his fingers and snarled and saw the almond eyes go wide and dark.  
  
“That hurts,” rasped Sherlock. The hands that scrabbled and punched had stilled, gripping Lestrade’s hips. They breathed. Greg dragged air into his throat. Sherlock coughed.  
  
He let go. With Sherlock’s hands still on him, sliding around, holding him…and he didn’t think what that… He let go of Sherlock’s throat and shoved back, off him, out of his arms. The sergeant pulled Sherlock out and away. Sherlock's cheek and throat were marked. They’d show purple streaks vivid against the pale skin, that night when Sherlock beat on his door. And the night after that. And then there was a case, and Sherlock was at the edges of his vision and then in his face, but it had stopped.  
  
It’s the color of old blood, it’s the color of bruises, it’s the color of his mother’s mouth. He hates the goddamn shirt. He hates himself when he sees it. He hopes the fucking genius never figures it out. Sherlock wears it still, he watches Greg watching him in it. And it’s only a matter of time before he does.  
  
***

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write about that shirt having other connotations.  
> Thanks to Carenejeans for looking at this and advising. All eccentricities are my own fault. I began writing this for a Christmas exchange but thought it was too bleak for a gift. First posted January 30, 2012.  
> ETA: Kestrel337 wrote a very fine remix, linked below; it's brilliant on its own, but I love it as the other wing of a diptych, showing the characters' isolation within the relationship.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [D.S. al Coda](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1811959) by [Kestrel337](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kestrel337/pseuds/Kestrel337)




End file.
